Book of the Silver Warrior

Samuel discovered the book from a corpse, adrift in a boat on the placid ocean of Hope’s Depression. Their scout had seen the dingy drifting, and flagged it down for retrieval, as it was the maritime law to rescue the stranded. The man who was aboard was long dead, dried out to a papery quality in the long seasonal sun. His hollow gaze, while morbid, exuded a peace that Samuel had never seen before.

Samuel had lost his parents young, and with little prospects on his home shores, he had accepted his lot as a sailor readily. The pay was alright, and it kept his hands working through the darker days, seeing port after port in the archipelagos of the inland seas. For nearly a decade now, he’d been carrying cargo and tying sails every day, working like a dog from sunrise to sunset; little else to busy himself with than idle dreams of what could be.

The law of the sea said that the spotter got to keep what he wanted off the dead man, though he didn’t seem eager for it. Sailors, of any sort and in any time and place are superstitious people, and the superstitions of these waters prevented the man from taking anything for fear of curses, especially the silver rings that adorned the mummy’s necklace. No one bothered with anything else, and they were ready to cover the thing with a shroud and bring it below decks when Samuel spotted the diary. The small weather-beaten tome had managed to survive the open sea well enough, and for some reason, it piqued his curiosity.

“Oi, Bellick?” He asked the scout. The man looked at him, an unlit cigarette perched between his crooked teeth. Samuel gave him a match and pointed at the book. Bellick frowned, knowing what he was asking, but he wasn’t willing to argue or linger on the strange discovery. So he nodded and turned away, shimmying back up the mast to his perch. Samuel took the book in his hands, brushing at the cover. He opened it.

“Make sure you tell the captain if you find something in there what tells us we’re to do with the body.” One of the other sailors patted his back, but he was already reading, something he hadn’t done for a long time. It was slow going, and he had to sound out the words in whispers sometimes to jog his memory.

“This journal begins with an account of my friend and ally who so provided it to me in equal parts jest and sincerity. I’ve no doubt he believes I do not know my letters nor how to write them, so jokes on him. Ha ha.” The dry jest seemed to match the writer's current state as he read on.

“I’ve known Bright for four years now, as a leader and the meanest bastard to ever walk the Traveling Lands. He’s a Kalkian, a silver warrior feared by the wicked and reviled by the Golden Sultanate, who we’ve fought in every theater and situation we’ve met them in. Together, with him and his boys and I, we’ve done impossible things, and made it through danger that lesser men would never brave. We’ve fought slaver bands armed with sorcerers weapons, cowed mutants of very near legend, and survived ambushes that saw armies fall. He led us through them all, and I’m proud to say that I trust him with my life.

The man is not without fault though. He’s a murderous bastard. I’ve never crossed him, but I’ve seen the fates that befall the men that do, and Bright and I have never been much for coincidence. There was this one fellow we let into our group while on the Indigo Road, I remember it like it was yesterday, the long grass waving like butter down bread…”

Samuel continued reading that night, burning a lamp above his hammock to continue the tales of the dead warrior. Tales of both past and future, of valor, and terror.

He read the book when his turn for the crow’s nest arrived, the wind blowing great clouds like the breath of the gods. He saw the clouds above the band of warriors as they rode into battle, the great war beasts of the Sultanate bellowing, yellow teeth and tusks gnashing curses as the sun lanced into their swords. The dust kicked up in sandstorms, the singing rain of arrows and the fury of gold armored horsemen, the blood quickening to a thumping rhythm of war.

He read the book during meals, where the warrior talked of the food of Kalicus, their love of ginger and root vegetables, the fatty duck broths and rice-strung noodles. The wine and liquor of wild fruits and the exotic meats of the Brass jungles in their roadside repasts, salted and drizzled with seasoned honey.

He read it while they battened down for storms, the dark and wet air of ancient ruins and caves of the long lost beasts. The golden and silver treasures that waited below, guarded by horrors unthinkable. Of the flashing fire and deadly exchanges, the ripping of meat and the roars of triumph.

But most of all, he read of the brotherhood that the men shared for each other, unspoken, but ever present. Arm in arm, sword and shield, stars and moonlight. They fought, and bled and ate and sang together, always together, and never apart.

For a full month and a half, he read the book, the long voyage soon coming to a close as they honed in on the next port. He was very nearly finished with the diary as well. He had memorized the names of the warrior band, both the living and deceased, and was soon to read the final entries.

The impact of the words, of the knowledge therein had left its mark in Samuel. He no longer stared at the horizon with angst of his life; now he dreamed of the forests, the marshes, the roads and the villages. He dreamed of adventure beyond the sea, of great pilgrimages and spires of far off cities, of the comrades that followed. He had already resolved to leave port and to find a new way in the world, the giddy idea spinning in his chest like a child's top.

As the night came down over the sea, the rim of the world purple as lilac, he opened the pages.

“I’ve not been the greatest of men.” The entry opened, penned by a hand with such hesitation that he felt it through his own. “It's in writing this that I’ve come to realize why that bastard actually gave me this book, it WAS a joke, at my expense. I’m not a Kalkian, I was born in the swamps, a hundred days travel, maybe longer, from Kalicus. I’ve ridden with these men and thought of them as brothers. I’ve sat with them through darkness and storms, but I don’t think they see me the same way. Not by a mile.

Bright has been sent a missive from his brothers to the east of the Indigo Road, far into the desert. They say that a noble of the Sultanate is coming our way, and that there’s much honor to be taken from his death. And I would agree, if the nobleman in question wasn’t a fucking four year old.

Never mind that, or that the men and women the baby and mother traveling with do so under the banner of neutrality, that even their own homeland recognizes.

Because Bright said we’re taking them, and Bright is not to be questioned on this. I said hogshit to that, and he sprung on me like a trap laid forever ago. Told me that I could quit if I wanted, that the Kalkian-born among them were more than capable of killing a “slaver noble” on their own. Not one of them bastards stood up for me. Not one. After everything we been through, they choose their grim traditions over our brothership.”

Now came furious scribbles, the curses, and at once, Samuel remembered that this diary, what came next was not a happy ending. He turned the page.

“I ain’t a Kalkian. I didn’t realize how much more important to them it was to be one of their “kind” over anything else. Even now as we’re getting ready and moving along the road to the ambush point, they’re watching me with distrust. I tried talking about it, getting some of the more reasonable men on my side. It was like hitting a brick wall. Even Falk, kindest and sweetest of us had this to say:

“Those men put that boy in this position. They handed him the scepter and the gold and the title knowing what they were placing him in. It is all men’s duty to protect their children with all the love of parents, and they decided to stick his neck out instead, for wealth unearned. It is our duty to chop it off, and remind them why they don’t mix their evil with their children.”

What the hell am I supposed to say in response of that? I asked if we could spare the kid and kill the rest then-” The entry cut off there.

Samuel turned the page; it was written in a scribble, and there were specks of long dried blood around the edges of the book. “Bright, you four-fingered fuck, if you somehow found and killed me, then you ain’t getting shit from this book. I’ve been following your ass for fifteen years, and I saw you like a demigod of the Silver Lady herself. But you’re a cruel bastard, and you have no soul like the gutless men who follow you. I could hang that traitor Heim for you, and I could turn a blind eye to the villages in the Black Ridges, but not this.” It continued, in an even worse slur than before.

“You’ll never find them, and if the things you always rambled about “justice” are true, then I will see you in Hell.”

Yet this was not the final entry. The final entry was a testimonial, a confession, and a map.

“My family hated my guts. And I hated them. But those men, they were my family more than they, and in the end they betrayed me as a matter of course. I don’t think there ever was such a thing, or maybe I was just drawn into the illusion of their light. Now that I’m at the end of my rope, there’s nothing left but darkness. Even if I make it to my hideout, the headache from his strike will do me in. Shattered my skull too good, that prick. The only legacy some hidden child far off in nowhere.”

More blood, staining some of the words, the handwriting desperate. “I miss those days. I want to sit around the fire one last time, to hear some of their stories about their homeland. I can’t even bring myself to hate them. Pathetic. Even the Kalkians would disavow them for what they were doing out there. If they knew, if they saw this book and the things we did in their name.”

Then there was a smattering of quotes, and some strange numbers that the navigator in him knew as coordinates. The last words of the dead warrior rang out in Samuel's mind, even as he closed the story.

“I fucking loved them. Why didn’t they love me back?”

His desire to adventure was muted behind the frantic sadness of the end. Here was a man that he now looked up to, and he had died ignobly, left adrift and betrayed. The unsettling end and the qualities of his once companions had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he found himself avoiding the other sailors.

The first step back on dry land, Samuel felt his whimsy leave him like the wind in sails. He resigned to the local tavern where several of the shipmates were laughing, or playing in the oldest of trades with smoky women. The bartender looked at Samuel and could recognize the sadness of a man torn. He poured him a double of the dry gin common here, and left him to sit alone.

“What troubles you friend?” Someone said behind him. He turned. There was a man, dark of hair and tall in stride, with the easy smile of a worker and a set of reed pipes strapped to his belt.

“Are we?” Samuel shot down the gin, getting the man’s measure. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at the words, and he clarified, “Friends?”

The fellow smiled. “I think that every man is a friend once met, unless it is in war. Are we at war…?”

“Samuel.”

“A fine name! Samuel, are we at war?”

He paused. Did the scattered archipelagos have war at the moment? He didn’t know. But even if they were, he had no stake in such things. “I suppose not.”

“Then tell me, what troubles you friend?”

“I-” The ease at which the man evoked friendship melted his foul mood. “I wish to leave my profession you see, but I…” He sighed, holding his forehead. “I’ve caught a string of bad nerves. I’m a coward.” His hand dug into the bar, fingernails scraping the wood.

The fellow tutted. “Just as all men start as friends, all big changes start with cowardice. Are you a sailor?”

“I-yes, how could you tell?”

The fellow smiled harder, beaming. “Your smell.” He tapped his nose. “You smell of the seas! You know-” He flagged down the bartender, and their cups were full and waiting as they talked. “-I am afraid of the seas! The water, the dark below, I never could get over it.” His voice was that of a singer, quiet, holding restraint for when he needed it on stage.

“Ha, you’re not wrong, even the greatest sailors have a healthy respect and fear of the sea.”

He slapped the bar with gusto. “Exactly! It's a type of natural fear all men experience. Well then, tell me, what do you wish to be instead that makes you, a sailor of the ferocious waters, so afraid?”

He hesitated, but relented as the warm wave of drink flowed into him. “Travel. I want to see the wider world, the Brass jungles-the-the-” He struggled. “The things that I can’t see around here, or on the ocean. But the monsters, the people…” He trailed off.

“Well, as a traveler who wishes to sail the wide oceans, to see the Moss Islands and the purple fires of the Witch Goddess, but is quite thoroughly scared of storms and the dark depths, I think I have a solution for us both! But before that, let’s share some of our greatest experiences, what say you Samuel?”

Seeing where the conversation was flowing, the sailor cracked the hint of a smile. They spoke of the scarier things they had both seen, masts breaking in fierce winds, strange beasts that howled at night. Pirates and raiders that stalked the horizon.

The talk actually did help. “You know, I can't remember why I was so afraid now.” This was a lie, he still thought back on the book, a twinge of melancholy unhampered. “What is your name sir?”

“Kincaid.” He reached his hand out, and Samuel shook it readily. It was the dulling of his senses with the alcohol that saved him, for he did not react to the fact that the man was missing his middle finger.

He dryly swallowed, surely this was only coincidence. He banished the idea from his mind, after all, there were many people missing many parts in this world, many of his fellow sailors had missing fingers from old surgery or rigging accidents. Coincidence. It was a coincidence. “So what’s this idea you had to help each other?”

Kincaid threw his chin up, turning it to cut the stars in a swivel. “An old tradition of my homeland, a pact of the soul. Here,” He pulled out a set of silver rings, corded around his neck. They jingled like chains as Samuel began to sweat. Deep in his back pocket, the little book from the abandoned warrior began to burn like a coal. “Take this ring and wear it. Whenever you’re out on the road, think of your friend you met in the tavern, and your fears will lessen. I in turn will wear this one,” He slipped it onto his finger, wiggling the digits even with the missing stump. “And likewise I will think of my landbound sailor friend, and be brave for them.”

“Hah, giving away a silver ring? Are you a Kalkian?” He took the little fetish, slipping it on even as his mind begged him to say less.

“Ah, a fine guess sir.” He nodded, affirming.

Samuel made his excuses, but assured him that he would keep the ring, to which Kincaid jokingly said that he’d hunt him down if he found it in a pawnshop. They had a good laugh, and said their goodbyes. But as Samuel stopped at the door, he heard his friend call back, “And to you sir, I hope your travels bring you fortune!”

“And I wish you similar Kincaid!” He called back.

The door to the building swung close, the strong voice and raucous bar behind him vanishing into a sinister whisper. “When next you see me, call me as my family does, Kincaid Bright!”

In the town street, the road stretched far out into the wider continent, ending in a horizon unknown. The ring burned on his finger, and he knew that he had erred in taking it, in reading the book. His resolve quickened. He stepped double pace, for there was little time to lose before the lost mummy was revealed to Kincaid, and the silver men watching the town.

It would be a long, dangerous journey to Kalicus, joined by monsters and men alike.